“Ghostlighting” is when someone you are dating suddenly disappears with no warning and then reappears a while later with no apology or explanation, acting as if nothing happened. (Photo: Getty)
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You may have heard of the term “ghostlighting,” as the portmanteau of two very spooky dating behaviors—ghosting and gaslighting. In fact, you may have even already witnessed such “boo”-rish behavior. But what may still be haunting you is why. Why do people ghostlight and what is the psychology behind it?
Well, I’ve already written in “A Funny Bone to Pick” for Psychology Today about how doubly troubling ghostlighting can be. Ghosting is when someone you’ve been dating or relationshipping with in some way suddenly disappears without warning or explanation. This naturally can leave you feeling quite bewildered in a “what just happened” type of way. When someone ghosts you, he or she may end up never communicating with you ever again.
That’s not the case with ghostlighting, though. Here the person does return after a period of time and begins the oh-so-fun gaslighting phase. Taken alone, gaslighting is when someone continues to makes deceptive statements to you in a way that makes you question your own judgment, perception of reality or even sanity. Step on the “gas” and add the “ghost” to get ghostlighting, and the deceptive statements become about not offering any apology or explanation and instead acting as if nothing happened and potentially even blaming you for their absence such as saying, “Hey you didn’t try hard enough to reach me.”
In a recent conversation with relationship expert and podcaster Sarah Hensley, PhD, who has been dubbed the “The Love Doc” and “The Dating Decoder,” she added other examples of such gaslighting statements, “It’s rewriting the narrative like saying ‘I don’t know why this is a big deal’ or ‘I was just so busy’ or ’I don’t think you should be that upset about it.’" She went on to say, “There’s just no excuse for having a consistent connection, dropping off for a sustained period of time and then coming back and acting like it was no big deal. It’s manipulative.” All of this can leave you wondering yet again, "What just happened?’
A question, then, is how often might this happen? In other words, how common is ghostlighting? Well, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t have a ghostlighting surveillance system. There’s no formal blood test for it. And people may not be willing to admit things like “Oh, I’ve ghostlit five people so far, six if you count the person who ghostlit me before I could do it to her.” So, for right now, we have to rely on indirect measures and anecdotal observations.
“I think it’s very common, because I think we’ve the science shows us that we’ve seen a pretty noticeable rise in dismissive-avoidant attachment, and these are the folks that really do this a lot,” Hensley related. “And since we’ve seen a rise in it, we’re seeing more of that behavior. I would say the majority of folks I work with who are putting themselves back on the dating market maybe after a breakup, are noticing that they’re coming across people who do this.” Don’t dismiss her mention of dismissive-avoidant attachment just yet as we’ll get back to it.
Meanwhile, I asked Hensley why she thinks ghostlighting has gotten more common. “I think it’s dating apps [in part]. I think it’s our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, that’s our attention spans in connection, as well,” she answered. “So people are seeking more and more novelty and clickers. So they might get bored with a connection clicker and drop off and kind of try to go find something else and then get bored with that and then come back to the old connection.” Yeah, dating apps have certainly transformed dating in many ways, including a number of bad ways, as I’ve described in Forbes previously. But’s it’s not just the apps that have contributed to ghostlighting, as Hensely emphaized, “I think it has to do with a lot of factors, including the rise of dismissive-avoidant attachment.”
Ghostlighters can have dismissive-avoidant attachment, where according to Sarah Hensely, PhD, "They avoid their own emotions as well as the emotions of other people so that they tend to dismiss other people's emotions." (Photo: Getty)
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OK, you can’t avoid the fact that Hensley mentioned the dismissive-avoidant attachment now twice. So, let’s get to it. “It’s a romantic attachment style, where they are they’re avoiding their own emotions as well as the emotions of other people so that they tend to dismiss other people's emotions.” she explained. “It’s really well-validated psychological science that shows that our earliest experiences with our caregivers really predict how we will show up in intimacy in our adult relationships. So these people who had parents who really focus on achievement and responsibility and don’t focus on how their kids feel, they kind of shut down their emotions.”
Hensley added, “So then they learn that intimacy and vulnerability are just generally unsafe and they develop sort of this hyper-independence where they just aren’t really that capable of sustained intimacy over time. They can kind of be good in the beginning and early in dating relationships, but when things just start to become more connected, that's when they drop off.”
She also described how those with dismissive-avoidant attachment can be particularly attractive at the beginning of dating: “They can look like a really good match because maybe they’re very successful in their career. Maybe they’re very in shape because they tend to be workaholics or hobbyaholics., so a lot of times they’re big into fitness.” Hensley elaborated on how this fits into the picture of them fearing closeness, “Their work and hobbies can exist to kind of keep them distanced from their own feelings and keep them distanced from relationships. If they’re super busy at work and they’re super busy at the gym, then there’s not much left of them for a romantic connection. They can use it as an excuse like, ‘Oh, well, my work life is just so busy.’”
Of course, not everyone with more emotionally distant parents will necessarily grow up to have dismissive-avoidant attachment. And not everyone with dismissive-avoidant attachment will end up ghostlighting. Plus, not all ghostlighters have dismissive-avoidant attachment. Some may ghostlight you, for example, simply because they do not think much of you specifically and just assume you will always be around as a backup plan.
Regardless of the reason behind the ghostlighting, Hensley recommended that you deal with ghostlighting by setting up good boundaries,"Just being like, 'That behavior doesn’t work for me.’ And if you’re in the dating phase and it really hasn’t been consistently exclusive, I would honestly walk away because that is a huge red flag that someone is going to be inconsistent or emotionally unavailable in a relationship." When I asked Hensley whether she can think of any situation where ghostlighting may be excusable, she replied, “I would say 99% of the time it is a big enough red flag to just completely cut things off in the dating phase unless they’re in some kind of accident and they can't communicate.”
In other words, being ghostlit is the opposite of a lit situation. When ghostlighting occurs, your relationship or whatever you want to call it may not have a ghost of a chance of being healthy.
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